Stevie Marvel at all times did make his songwriting genius sound simple. On August 18, 1973, “Higher Ground,” from the uniformly sensible album Innervisions, entered the Scorching 100. On September 29, it topped the Billboard R&B chart and had followers and fellow artists In awe. As for Stevie himself? “I did the whole thing in three hours,” he later instructed Q journal.
The music was a musical tour de power by the Motown genius, who was simply turning 23 as he put the music collectively in double-quick time, enjoying each instrument on the ultimate recording. He perfected the distinctive wah-wah groove of the music with a Mu-tron III pedal, additional underpinned with a Moog bassline.
However removed from a flippant remark about his personal artistry, the quote about how shortly he recorded it mirrored the sense of foreboding he felt on the time – and with good purpose. Quickly after Motown launched the only, and some days after Innervisions arrived in shops, a near-fatal occasion took him to a religious larger floor of his personal. In August 1973, in North Carolina, Marvel was concerned in a critical automotive crash which left him in a coma for 4 days.
‘I felt something was going to happen’
“It was almost as if I had to get it done,” he instructed Q of the recording session for the music. “I felt something was going to happen. I didn’t know what or when, but I felt something.” When the accident occurred, and he went on to a full restoration, it had a profound impact on his outlook on life.
“For a few days [afterwards], I was definitely in a much better spiritual place that made me aware of a lot of things that concern my life and my future and what I have to do to reach another higher ground,” he stated. “This is like my second chance for life, to do something or to do more and to face the fact that I am alive.”
When it made the highest of the R&B itemizing, “Higher Ground” ended Stevie’s labelmate Marvin Gaye’s six-week reign with “Let’s Get It On.” Two weeks after that, Stevie’s observe reached its pop peak of No.4.
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